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Biography:
Dr Mercer has an extensive experience in academic/ industrial partnerships and research commercialisation throughout his scientific career. Most recently he coordinated the research strategy for a high profile academic-industrial collaboration between UCL and GSK; Creative Advances for Fibrosis Therapy (CRAFT), focussing on the discovery of and validation of drug targets for the development of novel anti-fibrotic therapies. Within this role Dr Mercer interacted closely with GSK R&D, being appointed Biology Lead within the Fibrosis DPU where he was centrally involved in enabling a currently ongoing PoM dose escalation study for a PI3 kinase inhibitor (GSK2126458) in IPF patients. His previous work into the acute lung injury at the Centre for Inflammation and Tissue Repair, UCL initiated a patent filing on a novel chemokine pathway in the lung which leveraged funding to explore therapeutic targeting of this pathway with a monoclonal antibody approach. Prior to working at UCL, Dr Mercer held a joint postdoctoral position between Novartis and the Leukocyte Biology Section at Imperial College London investigating novel inflammatory mediators in COPD. He received his BSc (Hons) in Physiology with Pharmacology from the University of Southampton, where he also completed his PhD studies, funded by an MRC/ Pfizer CASE Award, investigating the role of MMPs in COPD in 2001.
